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Malaysia has abundant, but unutilized oil palm fronds waste. The lack of knowledge
on the characteristics of biomass is considered as one of the barriers for not
utilizing it as a source of energy. Particularly, determining the moisture content
of biomass and reducing it to the required level for the use of thermochemical
processes, have remained as a major concern. In this study, the hygroscopic
nature of oil palm fronds was investigated and the equilibrium moisture content
in a specific laboratory room condition (80% relative humidity and 23°C
room temperature) was identified. In the investigation the equilibrium moisture
content of oil palm fronds was obtained to be 12% on wet basis. The variation
of moisture content of different sections of oil palm fronds with particle density
was also investigated and it was found that moisture content has positive correlation
with density. For the same moisture content the middle part of the frond was
found to be denser than the other sections and the hub section was found to
be the least. To investigate the relationship of density with porosity, images
of different sections of the frond were taken using scanning electron microscope.
The image results showed that the porosity of the middle section is lower than
the other two sections while that of the hub section is the highest.